


Like Your Father

by RegularRainbow



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, POV Second Person, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Inflicted Injury, Verbal Abuse, intentional injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegularRainbow/pseuds/RegularRainbow
Summary: The wind whistles like laughter.
Kudos: 1





	Like Your Father

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: Alcoholism, Verbal Abuse, Abuse. Self-Harm (Not cutting, but purposefully harming oneself).

“Listen you piece of shit,” spittle flies from his mouth and strikes across your face, his breath smells of cheap beer and stale nicotine. “I don’t even want you.” He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t have too; it hurts more in his cigar-harshened growl anyway.

He seizes your shirt in his fists, snatching your attention from the pretty white marble tile your mother picked out for her kitchen. “You ungrateful,” He pauses to swallow down bile and release an acidic, wet belch. He tongues at his words, his face blank, he’s forgotten the words of hatred he had for you.

This hatred still sits at the tip of his tongue. He’s not done with you yet. He licks his chops and you smell the burn of alcohol from the bottom of his belly. “You aren’t worth shit to me.”

Your head throbs, your mouth is glued shut with dry saliva. You squint away from the first breath of sunlight and prop yourself up, placing your hand atop a puddle of spilled wine, green shattered glass bottle laying as broken as you feel beside it. You have to peel your sweat and booze covered self off the floor. You press your fingers against your temples and massage away the beginning headache.

You think it might be Saturday or Sunday, if you hadn’t downed you father’s stash you might remember. You lean against the counter and will away the urge to spill your dinner -which was apparently just alcohol- all over your mother’s marble tile. The world spins and turns and whirls, mocking your pain. The wind whistles past like laughter.

You have to take a shower, you smell like an alcoholic, you smell like your father.

Everything gets immensely brighter after you leave the kitchen, your mother always liked windows, she liked the outdoors and sunshine. She liked your father as well, so you’re hesitant to indulge in any of her favorite past times.

You step into the shower, and let the hot water sear against you, burning the ache from your skin. You’re desperate to be clean again, to feel real again. You scrap at your skin, and then there’s blood.

It takes you a moment to realize that blood is yours, that you are in pain. But then you do, and it’s too much and not enough in the same choked-out gasp.

You have to stop drinking like last night, you’re beginning to look like your father. All worn down, and chewed up, and spit out. You put on clean clothes, you’ll have to do more laundry if you want to keep putting on clean clothes.

You grab some roses from your mother’s garden, not as carefully as your mother taught you. You prick yourself, twice. One time by accident, a second to remind yourself that you are real.

You get into your car and you drive, to nowhere at first, and then you’re driving to the cemetery to say hello to your mother.

She made you promise to take care of her garden, she made you promise to be loyal to your father; to her idea of your father. And you keep your promises. You set the roses onto her grave like you might’ve set them into her arms and kiss her gravestone like you might’ve kissed her cheek.

You take a seat next to her, and pull a notebook from your back pocket, it’s a worn little thing, but it keeps your secrets so perfectly, you can’t find a reason to throw it out. Even if it still smells like cheap beer and stale nicotine.

“I’m single again,” Dry laughter slips past your lips and consumes the air with its bitter presence. You lick your lips and begin again, this time you smile and laugh and make it seem like it doesn’t hurt. “I’m single again, but that doesn’t matter right?”

She says nothing, she always says nothing. You bury your face in your knees and cry. Rocking back and forth, in that subconscious way people do when they are hurting. Your notebook falls against the grass, and the wind flips its pages, as if to read it.

You’re sprawled out on the kitchen floor drunk again, covered in your own vomit, the bitter yellow face of the moon catches on your beer bottle, mocking you. The trees scratch against the window as if they are trying to claw their way inside, as if they might be able to stop you. You’re sick.

The wind whistles like laughter.


End file.
